Pe­ter Christo­pher

The cold hard facts con­demned Petrotrin to clo­sure.

This was the state­ment of Petrotrin chair­man Wil­fried Es­pinet while un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion from Se­nior Coun­sel Dou­glas Mendes in the In­dus­tri­al Court yes­ter­day.

Es­pinet re­turned to the wit­ness box as the Oil­field’s Work­ers Trade Union’s in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions of­fence com­plaint against Petrotrin con­tin­ued.

C Mendes is rep­re­sent­ing the OW­TU in the mat­ter.

Es­pinet was once again asked by Mendes if on the Au­gust 12 the board had told the Gov­ern­ment the best op­tion was to close Petrotrin.

Es­pinet de­nied any such rec­om­men­da­tion was made by the board, but a de­ci­sion was made based on facts be­fore the board on Au­gust 15.

The Petrotrin chair­man, how­ev­er, told the court that the cost of need­ed re­pairs to the ul­tra-low sul­phur diesel plant and the re­fin­ery placed the com­pa­ny in a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion.

Re­pair of the ULSD Plant would have cost $340 mil­lion while the re­fin­ery would have cost an es­ti­mat­ed $1 bil­lion.

Es­pinet said it did not come as a shock that re­pairs were re­quired for the fa­cil­i­ties, but the shock came from the cost, which he did not know how to fi­nance.

“There was no de­ci­sion un­til we saw the re­quire­ment for fi­nanc­ing,” Es­pinet said.

Es­pinet ad­mit­ted af­ter the board and Gov­ern­ment had come to the re­al­i­sa­tion that the on­ly vi­able op­tion was the shut down of the re­fin­ery, they did not im­me­di­ate­ly go back to the OW­TU to in­form them of the de­ci­sion.

Es­pinet, when ques­tioned about this by Mendes, said ini­tial­ly he did not be­lieve he had bro­ken sec­tion 40 of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Act but lat­er ad­mit­ted to Pres­i­dent of the In­dus­tri­al Re­la­tions Court Deb­o­rah Thomas- Fe­lix that he was not fa­mil­iar with sec­tion 40 up­on her prob­ing.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry Fi­nance Vish­nu Dhan­paul tes­ti­fied af­ter Es­pinet.

He ex­plained that Petrotrin ac­count­ed for an es­ti­mat­ed $12 bil­lion or ten per cent of the coun­try’s over­all debt.

He said from as far back as 2013, in­vestors had raised more ques­tions about the sta­tus of Petrotrin than the sov­er­eign debt of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Un­der cross-ex­am­i­na­tion from Mendes, Dhan­paul re­vealed that fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment of the court mat­ter, Petrotrin’s gov­ern­ment guar­an­teed debt rose from US$230 mil­lion to $402 mil­lion.

He was adamant that the in­junc­tion would have a neg­a­tive ef­fect on the planned re­struc­tur­ing for Petrotrin, but could not give de­tails as to how the time­line would be af­fect­ed when ques­tioned by the OW­TU’s se­nior coun­sel.

Dhan­paul con­firmed that Moody’s was told as far back as April that the com­pa­ny was to be re­struc­tured in­to a more fea­si­ble com­pa­ny, as the cred­it rat­ing com­pa­ny con­tin­ued to hold reser­va­tions about the com­pa­ny’s sta­tus.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to Au­gust 13.